going through the motions

On the anti-Ayn-Rand schtick

I heard once of a Christian kid who became an atheist of the Ayn-Rand kind. This blew my mind. I couldn’t believe that anyone with real Christian knowledge would be swayed by her assertions (on atheism, it is too kind to call them arguments).

So if I had known that person, or if it was ever to happen to someone I know, perhaps I will shift in my present stance.

But for now, my present stance is that most of the Christian attacks on Ayn Rand are posturing and pretentious. Not as much as she was, I guess, but with less virtue to compensate for the vice.

Yes, Ayn Rand was a materialist atheist. Yes, atheism is opposed to Christianity. Telling us that Atheism is opposed to Christianity is not worth the typing it takes to write the sentence. We know this already.

If you want to see Christian appropriations of Ayn Rand, you should read Herbert Schlossberg’s Idols for Destruction. A few of his appropriations are worth ten times all the ranting refutations put out by people claiming to be intellectual.

And if you want to see her refuted, you will learn more of value by reading her fellow atheist (or at least agnostic) Murray Rothbard. Granted, Rothbard, has an axe to grind (for good reason). But he did, at one point, sincerely admire her and try to interact with her. That is better than just about an Christian’s attack.

I find it appalling, that one can be considered intellectual in Christian circles to be acquainted with Marx, or Nietzsche, but somehow appreciating some aspects of Ayn Rand’s thought is outside the boundaries.

I’ll agree that Rand is somewhat immature. I don’t own any of her works any more. But in college I read most of them. I couldn’t finish The Fountainhead because I think “no means no” and not even Howard Roark should guess that she really wants it. But I read the rest of her fiction, including her play, “The Night of January 16th.” And I read many, many of her essays.

And I remember distinclty that in several of them, she defended traditional Christians from Liberal theology. She could tell the difference and saw in Liberalism an enemy of real thinking. In many cases, reading her was like reading H. L. Mencken’s obituary of J. Gresham Machen.

Yes, I think Mencken was an amazing genius and a brilliant writer, even if he wasn’t brilliant as he thought he was. And I read Camille Paglia,. And I think Justin Raimondo is the greatest American columnist alive today. (Actually, I don’t think it. It is simply a fact.)

I suppose all those opinions call forth for some Christian “world view analysis” to tell me who is a pervert and who an atheist and on and on.

People act as if the recognition of Ayn Rand’s genius (with her blindness) is some sort of right wing bias. It is the critics who usually reveal they are not so much defending God as the state.